Asst Professor of English Literature + Director of New Variorum Shakespeare @TAMU
Houston, TX
Joined April 2013
- Tweets23.5K
- Following2.5K
- Followers5.4K
- Likes75.9K
Robert Stagg retweeted
Robert, I remembered my favorite illustration of Milton's numerology - during their conversation in Bk 8, Adam and Raphael discuss the Ptolemaic vs. Copernican systems, Milton places the word "Sun" at the exact center of the verse paragraph (@ 8.122-23 - " What if the Sun / Be Centre to the World") even though the angel leaves the question (strategically) in doubt. 🤯
You probably know this already, but I've sunk too deep into Miltonic nerdery at this point that I hope you will indulge me 🤓 -- it's an echo of the fact that the Son *ascends* his chariot to defeat the rebel angels at the exact center of the entire poem (6.762 - "Ascended, at his right hand Victorie"). Alastair Fowler’s annotated edition highlights all of these points as well as the acrostics you mentioned in your OP.
Checking a reference in Book III of ‘Paradise Lost’ and stumbled across the lovely STARS acrostic as Satan surveys the universe (one of several such acrostics in Milton’s poem):
Robert Stagg retweeted
Catherine Deneuve and Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel during filming "Belle de Jour," 1967.
Until last night’s ‘Louisiana in Texas’ concert at the Miller Theater in Houston, I hadn’t heard any ‘zydeco’ — a genre of music originating from Louisiana creoles, led by accordion and frottoir. And the supposed etymology of ‘zydeco’ is almost as interesting as the music itself:
Robert Stagg retweeted
Probably my favourite version. It's much less bombastic than Olivier's or Branagh's.
#StCrispinsDay
A Chicagoan double act by Timothy Harrison and Edgar Garcia for the annual Camden Lecture @RiceUniversity yesterday, testing how we might think comparatively about ‘Paradise Lost’ and the contemporaneous Mayan ‘Popol Vuh’. V good on the unpeopled quality of Milton’s underworld/s.
Robert Stagg retweeted
Thank you to everyone who came to yesterday’s book launch for ‘Collaboration, Technologies, and the History of Shakespearean Bibliography’ and congratulations to its authors!
Robert Stagg retweeted
folger.edu/blogs/shakespeare…
🎭 A little taste of Shakespeare at Thirty, now up on @FolgerLibrary website
@princetonupress
Join us on Zoom tomorrow (Friday) as we launch this @CUP_LitPerform Element about Shakespearean bibliography under the auspices of @NVS_TAMU!
More details including the Zoom link here:
newvariorumshakespeare.org/n…
Robert Stagg retweeted
How bad is administrative bloat in higher ed?
At MIT, the “student body has grown by 8% and its faculty by 9% since the mid-1980s. By comparison, the tally of administrators jumped by 189%.”
A very welcome book delivery yesterday: an advance copy of Tom Bishop’s edition of ‘As You Like It’ for the Arden Fourth Series. Proud to have worked on these editions as a Fourth Series Fellow. @Ardenpublisher
“Comments upon Shakespeare keep pace with the National Debt, and will at last become equally insufferable and out of fashion”
— Robert Southey, qtd in this book which we’ll be giving an online launch on Friday under the auspices of @NVS_TAMU
Join us: newvariorumshakespeare.org/n…
THIS WEEK! We’re hosting an online book launch for ‘Collaboration, Technologies, and the History of Shakespearean Bibliography’ (co-authored by some of our NVS team).
More info here:
newvariorumshakespeare.org/n…
“The Seine is the only river in the world that runs between two bookshelves.”
— Kirsty Lang, speaking about the Parisian bouquinistes 📚
Robert Stagg retweeted
From James Merrill’s letters, as lovely a piece of art criticism as I know. “When I was little my mother used to say there was an animal heaven where pets went after death…Vermeer makes you believe in a heaven for things + textures—cracked leather, brass, paper, silk, + yarn.”
“there is no reason to assume that all universalisms have to be the European Enlightenment universalism that historicist criticism has urged us to shun”
(Jonathan Burton)
Robert Stagg retweeted
Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine and Billy Wilder having lunch during filming "The Apartment," 1960.
For all the eye-popping spectacles in Ken Russell’s ‘The Devils’ (1971), which I saw in reissue at a local cinema tonight, I was perhaps most shocked to find the poet Christopher Logue playing Cardinal Richelieu…
Robert Stagg retweeted
One week to go!
Our next NVS Seminar will be an online book launch for this new CUP Element!
Join us on Friday 23 October at 12 noon CT. Zoom link available here: newvariorumshakespeare.org/n…
